Shamus Bartmess

On my 2nd visit to Mrs. Leadbetter’s classroom, I had the privilege of helping the high school students start on their journey into the realm of research papers. From helping them narrow down their ideas to coming up with ways to focus their ideas into a research paper, I was a busy bee. First though, Mrs. Leadbetter split the class up into four different groups and assigned me and Tahvon to 2 of these groups. My group in particular was somewhat challenging because they didn’t understand their assignment. Therefore, as Boss states in chapter four, I had to remove bottlenecks. I had to help the group to understand their assignment in order for me to help them one on one. Therefore, if I couldn’t help one student, he/she was able to get help from their peers until I was able to help said person. Now, from what I saw of their research paper starter assignment, they were supposed to come up with a research topic and state why they were interested in it. This proved challenging because what seemed to be such a simple assignment to me, proved to be anything but that. In order to make this more understandable for the students I had to, as Boss would say it, expand my project management strategy. In other words, I had to help them find ways to work through their projects. They were very broad in their thinking which would lead to a very long paper. They needed to shorten their papers up so I provided tips on how to focus their ideas. One girl is doing her project on the benefits of 21st century agriculture technology. How could I help her focus her ideas though? I did it by providing subtle hints to not just look at technology, but to look at two or three different technologies which farmers use today that benefit them. Such as focusing on GPS and pesticides, and automatic sprinklers. By doing this, she was able to gain ideas about where she is right now, and where she wants to go with this paper. How though will I be able to help them further understand a research paper? 

One idea which I have for helping the students to understand how to write a research paper is to provide them with an example of a paper which I wrote. By doing this, I would show them how I formed a thesis statement, body paragraphs, and a conclusion. What else would need showing in this though? Well, I could always show how to incorporate sources throughout the paper in different ways. Such as, providing a straight up quote. Another option would be to lead into an author’s idea and not directly quoting them but still giving them the credit for their ideas. This is something that I really struggled with in high school and I would help them to figure it out if I am able. After showing how I went through the process of coming up with thesis and topic sentences, I could show them how I like to write my paper. Then come back and fill it in with quotes from the authors which I have already read in order to really back my paper up. But it comes to my attention now that I should tell them to go ahead and read through different sources first. But how to find good, solid sources can be a challenge. I would also put them through a little exercise which would consist of different websites such as .com websites and .edu or .gov and ask them which is the best scholarly source to use. But by doing this I would be able to help them figure out how to find sources, come up with thesis statements, and show them how to incorporate their sources.